User blog:DutchRits/Character Card Comparison, Part 1
In light of the burden I shared with everyone yesterday, I thought it would be wise to move on to a topic which brought me to this community in the first place: character card stat disparity. Now, I've seen several other attempts to address this issue, like Toot-Toot1's thread http://transformers-legends.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:23448, but I wanted to take a different tack. The "deck creep" is pretty well evident from a simple sorting of the MTM stat totals from the All_Character_Card_List, but I'd like to take it a step further: I'd like to offer a blueprint for Mobage to actually FIX the game by rebalancing the cards into distinct tiers, similar to the tiers in the events. I'm going to make my case in multiple parts in order to lay the foundation for my proposal, and to do that I have to begin at the bottom....the common cards. I've included two photos from the "spreadsheet of justice" I've created using data from the card list mentioned above, which I've done for each card type. Starting with the Common © and Uncommon (UC) cards (forthcoming in the next part), however, you can see that Mobage initially had the idea of organizing the cards within a type by "tier," or power level. The end result is that there are stratifications within a card type. The tiers actually work well if you only consider the campaign C, UC and Rare ® cards as well as the space bridge random draw Super Rare (SR) cards. It is the event cards which throw off this dynamic, which I'll address in a later post. A closer look at the C cards shows that there is a clear distinction in card power when considering the total of each card's MTM stats. What's more, there also seems to be a nod to the toys/character stats, in which certain characters are weaker than others. (Personally, I would have liked to have seen all of the "mini" Autobots & Decepticon tapes like Gears, Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, Rumble, Frenzy et al, as Common cards (which a few are) rather than full-size characters like Grappel, Hoist, Smokescreen, Red Alert and Sunstreaker, but I get where the developers are coming from. Some of it is a popularity contest.) This simple stratification (or Tiers, as I will refer to them from here on) is also easily seen in the second photo I posted, as the respective cards fall into a very obvious pattern, as detailed below: Tier 1 4k-4.99k Total MTM: This is pretty straightforward. Hardshell through Overkill have the lowest overall MTM total and make up the bottom of the rung. My assumption until now was that Huffer was the weakest overall character, given that he always appeared first when I sorted my deck by increasing "Overall" power. Apparantly, that position is due to the game prioritizing attack power. I was a little dismayed to see "Mr One-Trick Pony" himself, Trailcutter here. I would have thought he would have made the UC cut. Blurr was another one that I thought would have appeared as a UC rather than as the second weakest character in the game. Still his card art is pretty sweet. Another bit of a surprise was that the original "delux" insecticons (Venom, Ransack, and Chopshop) appeared here with the more well-known insecticons (Hardshell, Kickback, and Sharpshot). I would have expected them to be UCs, and I especially would not have expected Venom to be the second-weakest insecticon, given that he's their leader. I guess that was "fixed" in The_Bee_Team, but it appears that they fell prey to the "unpopular character" curse. Tier 2 5k-5.99k: Again, this is consistently obvious. The ten cards in this range are all pretty equivalent in power. Autobot Tracks being only slightly better than Autobot Gears was a bit odd, but whatever. Gears is better than Huffer in this type, but during the event, [[The_Bee_Team] his stats are much worse than Huffer's, despite appearing as the boss after Huffer.] Interestingly, three of the Constructicons find themselves in this type/tier (Bonecrusher, Mixmaster, and Scavenger) while Long_Haul & Hook made the UC cut. Tier 3 6k-6.99k: A pretty clear distinction here, as well. Nothing really significant stands out. If it were up to me, Warpath would have been a UC, not a C. Of all the "minibots," he always stood out as a head-scratcher. "A tank that's smaller than a sportscar?" Riiiiggghhhttt. But he's the same size as the larger 'Bots in the old cartoons. And with his role in "Fall of Cybertron," I figured he'd have a larger role. thanks to the event, [[Full_Assault], he's made his appearance as a SR.] Tier 4 7k-7.69k: I cut this tier short since several of the UC cards overlap in this tier, which is the only place this occurs. There is usually a pretty big jump from type to type. However, this tier features a mere three cards. In future posts I'll make reference to "relative capability," which is a completely subjective method of gauging a particular character's ability/power based on context with other characaters. For example, most fans would agree that Jetfire is a powerful Autobot and, most likely, more powerful than any of the other Decepticon Seekers but would not be as powerful a character as, say, Grimlock, Optimus, Metroplex, Megatron, or several other iconic characters. Whenever I reference a relative capability of a character, this is based solely on my own opinion and a brief reading of character bios from the Transformers wiki. I expect there to be disagreement. My point is that some characters should be/are more powerful than others and that there are instances in the game where that is not accurately reflected. So please bear with me. The bottom line: there are distinct tiers within the Common cards. Next: the trend continues in the Uncommon cards. Edit 31 July 2013: I added rationale behind my tier proposal. -DutchRits Edit 12 Aug 2013: I added a definition (of sorts) to the phrase "relative capability". -DutchRits Category:Blog posts